My Experiment with Cheating

When I saw all these people with giant Twitter lists I wanted to run with the big dogs too. I had heard people talk about Tweet Adder. So I bought it and I set up an additional twitter account based on podcasting. I have tweet adder looking for my target audience, and automatically following them. It automatically unfollows people who don't follow me after a certain amount of time. The interesting thing is many times I send the exact same tweets through my “real” twitter account (@learntopodcast) and my fake one.

I Did Get More Followers

My robot account has 1627 followers. My real account has 298 (18% the size of my automated). On my real account I retweet and I start conversations. I take interest in other people. I answer questions. As I look at my last 20 mentions in tweetdeck, 19 of them are from my real account and one is from my robot account. That means my 17% bigger twitter account is only providing 5% return. I've also gained more consulting clients from the “real” account.

You have to look at the quality of follower. When people lose weight and thay say, “I lost six pounds.” I always want to go “Of what?” If that's all water weight, it will be back.

How To Build Your Podcast Audience

You build your audience one at a time. Here is how you do that:

1. Get your podcast in the best shape you can afford. Keep in mind, I wouldn't but a car from a guy who sells out of a tent. If he can't invest in a building, he's probably not going to be around for support. With this in mind, try to avoid free web hosting, free this, free that.

2. Think about who your target audience member. Picture them in your mind. Make this a crystal clear image in your mind.